As medical and dental fields become more competitive, effective marketing becomes more crucial. But in the struggle to stay on top, there are three challenges that  medical practices and dentists face that are hurting their potential for growth.

Patient Cancellations and No-Shows

Every dentist knows the inconvenience of cancellations and no-shows all too well—statistics show that the average medical practice loses $150,000 in yearly revenue due to missed appointments. Appointment cards never have the lasting effect that you hope for, and calling every single patient is a drain on resources and time. So what’s a dentist to do? Send postcards? Not with today’s postage. Send a carrier pigeon? How do you get patients to keep their appointments?

Not Receiving Payment

For a business—any business—to make money, they need to get paid. It seems like a no-brainer, but many practices struggle to collect payments. Like patient reminders, it’s difficult to follow up with every patient without spending a lot of money on postage or employees’ valuable work time. How do you collect payments in a timely, cost-effective way?

Poor Use of Marketing Budget

Everywhere you look you see advertisements for dental implants, teeth whitening, new crowns, etc. Dentists know the importance of advertising and are using their marketing budget to ensure their practice is seen. But the problem generally isn’t with visibility—it’s knowing which efforts get the most visibility. Dentists and other medical practices pay for billboards, newspaper ads, PPC ads, etc. but don’t know which of those ads are actually bringing in their customers. So how do you figure out which of your advertising efforts are actually bringing in your customers?

Three questions, and we have the answers.

Curious? Check out this white paper written especially for elective and cosmetic service providers. Three challenges faced by dentists, three solutions—and they all have one tool in common: your phone.

The post 3 Things That Are Hurting Dentists and Medical Providers appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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Speak2Leads’ (S2L) proposition is simple, respond immediately to a customer lead using voice powered by Tropo, with up to six in total carefully timed call attempts. 78% of all sales go to the first company to return a prospect’s call. Sammy James the founder and CEO of Speak2Leads explained, “A Kellogg study on Lead Response Management (LRM) revealed the odds of connecting with a lead increases by 100 times if attempted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead is generated. And the odds of converting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes increases by 21 times. Put simply, using Speak2Leads can triple a company’s sales.” The core of the business is a call, which is sales people talking to leads at the right time for the lead, hence Speak2Leads uses Tropo to connect those sales people to leads as fast as possible, generally in under 30 seconds. This can raise the leads contacted from a typical 40% to over 90%, more leads contacted means more sales, more leads contacted first means more sales, a doubling and in some cases a tripling of sales can be achieved.

When Speak2Leads receives a lead; which can come from many sources, for example the lead fills in a form on the internet with their contact details; S2L’s automated lead response application then calls the appropriate sales person for that customer, the sales person hears an announcement and is prompted to press 2 to speak to the lead. This is all powered by Tropo. Getting the sales person and lead to connect is more complex than this scenario suggests, and the service must be integrated into the business processes of S2L’s customer to make the lead response management measureable. Solving this hard real-world problem is the competitive advantage of the S2L platform. S2L works with the leading CRM’s, email service providers, landing page and marketing automation platforms, such as Salesforce.com, Unbounce, HubSpot, InfusionSoft and MailChimp.

Speak2Leads has been in operation for 7 years, in building the business they have experienced a number of telephony platform providers upon which they’ve run their business. “We need the very best Telephony network we can buy,” said Sammy, “and Voxeo Labs is in our experience the best network on the market. It’s the lowest Total Cost of Ownership because it’s just got to work, no ifs, ands, or buts.” Sammy explained, “Voice is complex, calls can drop when you consider the computers, switches, wire and fiber-optic cables involved and when they do you need; a partner that knows voice networks inside out and will respond fast and furious to identify the source of the problem and get it fixed. Also we’re adding features every 4 to 6 weeks, hence we need a platform and a partner that can work with us to meet our specific customer needs. Voxeo Labs provides the world class support and advice so we’re the best we can be.”

Sammy has impressive plans for the expansion of Speak2Leads. “International is tough given the mobile call charges, we’re exploring with Voxeo Labs how Phono and other options can help us expand our business faster into international markets. We’re happy to white-label, and looking to expand internationally through partners as well as directly. Voxeo Labs is proving to be an important partner in helping us grow our business.” Sammy’s advice on his experiences in building this business are, “Keep it simple, don’t disrupt the customer’s existing business complement it, zero training required, no IT required, measure, measure and measure. Using Tropo enables us to seamlessly insert our value into what businesses are doing today, with a reliable and highly programmable platform, and unmatched support in the industry.”

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Genesys further extends its cloud-based contact center solutions portfolio with proactive collections and payments, mobile marketing, and customer service applications.

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M*Modal Fluency digital dictation technology will integrate with the healthcare provider's Epic electronic health records system.

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Hosted speech-to-text applications for transcribing voice messages meet Avaya's requirements.

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Daniel Yu (pictured right) wanted to be a professional composer. After years of practice, he was accepted to two of the nation’s top music conservatories–and chose not to go. Daniel decided not to study music in college at all. Instead, he started coding. Two years later, he developed a platform that’s helping save lives in developing countries via SMS.

A few months ago, Daniel and his fellow classmates at the University of Chicago, launched Project SMS Account Management to help health clinics in developing countries track medicine shipments via text. The goal is to increase communication between the clinic, the patient, and the shipper so health workers have the supplies they need to save lives.

Daniel saw first hand what a lack of infrastructure can do to a health clinic during a summer trip to Egypt  and Jordan. Papers were everywhere, there was no single point of truth for patient’s records and no timetable for shipments of medicine.

Project SAM team member, Cindy Siu, was in Peru at the same time Daniel was abroad. Cindy worked with local health clinics to help tuberculosis patients in the area but saw a serious problem. Health clinics would frequently run out of tuberculosis medicine. Many tuberculosis patients’ recovery depended on taking the right medicine at the right time. When supplies ran out, patients suffered.

After their trips abroad, Daniel and Cindy returned to the University of Chicago to build Project SAM, and expanded their team. The service is now live in more than 20 health clinics in Peru. Health workers use Twilio SMS to log what medicine they need, when, and in what quantity. Daniel hopes to include additional features to the service by using Twilio voice prompts so health workers can easily log inventory and track data. “For example, a nurse could just call a Twilio number and be automatically prompted with the question ‘How much medication do you need?’ Then they can press ‘9’ instead of logging that information on a paper spreadsheet,” says Daniel.

At the end of our interview, I asked Daniel what he saw as the difference between writing music and writing code. Instead, he pointed out the similarities between the two. “The end result of composing is to give music for musicians to perform. With coding, the end result is to build a great UX and something people can actually use.”

While Daniel may have put music on hold, it seems he’s still composing. Whether he’s writing music or code, his goal is still the same: to build something for good, that people can use.

Project SAM hopes to expand into Northern Africa, as well as Nepal soon. You can find more information at their website here.  Listen the podcast “Project SAM Saving Lives via SMS” in podcast form below.

The Music of Code: Daniel Yu Builds Project SAM, Saving Lives via SMS

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During the CTIA 2013 conference  will be the RCS Summit – Enabling OTT-like services while preparing for HTML5 & WebRTC organized by Informa.   Vish Nandlall, CTO and VP Strategy & Market Development, will moderate the Future of Advanced Communications Technology panel.  And on the panel will be our own Jason Goecke of Voxeo Labs; expect a frank and forthright discussion on the challenges and opportunities RCS (Rich Communications Services) and WebRTC (Web Real Time Communications) bring to service providers and their customers, both consumer and enterprise.

Jason Goecke and Kile Brown will be at CTIA on May 22^nd in Las Vegas, please contact us  if you’d like to meet to chat about Communications APIs , WebRTC and Web Communications, and the future of communication services.

And by the way, Jose de Castro of Voxeo Labs gave a WebRTC workshop at the IMS World Forum.  Quoting Larry Baziw from Rogers, “Super valuable both from a level set and also a great cross section of the emerging WebRTC ecosystem and solutions.”   And from Wilfred Nicoll from Telefonica, “Thanks for an excellent workshop, it was by far the best workshop I’ve ever attended.”

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As Google Universal Analytics continues to pick up steam, more and more of our customers are interested in the different ways the tool can be used to benefit their businesses or clients. With so many possibilities, we thought we’d give you three unique ways you can use Universal Analytics to this end.

Tightening up e-commerce

It has always been a goal of ecommerce businesses to gain more insight into how users are interacting on their site. Analytics plays an intricate role in tracking: how well your product pages are received, how user-friendly your product search is, and where in the checkout process your users get stuck or abandon. How do you know which users simply leave your site vs. the ones that pick up the phone to call for more assistance? How do you tie that phone call back to not only the original source of the visit but to the incomplete checkout?

Tracking web Events in Google Universal Analytics is not very different than it was in classic Google Analytics, unless of course you use Ifbyphone. I won’t turn this post into a tutorial on Event tracking, but lets talk through a basic example:

I have Event tracking on my website for my four-step checkout process, and I notice an uncomfortable percentage of users do not complete page three after completing page two. That data gives me a big clue as to where I might begin addressing a usability issue on my website. With Ifbyphone’s Universal Analytics integration, I would also be able to see how many of those people picked up the phone and called my business after getting stuck somewhere on page two of my website’s checkout.

Let’s say that person just went ahead and made a purchase on the phone, instead of getting help with their issue and returning to complete the checkout online. I’ve now lost the ability to track that sale to the source of the web visit (which could have been a paid search click). With Ifbyphone I can see real time data about what marketing source drove the call.

A/B testing for promotions

If you have a promotion for a new product and you are testing different placement locations of the promotion on your homepage using Google Content Experiments, Universal Analytics Call Tracking from Ifbyphone enables you to use phone calls as the conversion metric to determine your winner. For example, in an industry like home services or real estate, visitors to the website are more likely to first visit your site and then convert into a phone call. Ifbyphone’s Universal Analytics integration can tie web visits to those phone calls, providing you with the data you need to prove which promotional placement, resulted in the most phone calls to your business.

The same can be said for A/B testing PPC landing pages. Call Tracking with Ifbyphone has always given you the ability to attribute calls to a paid search campaign, keyword, publisher, etc. Now with our Universal Analytics integration you can use those phone calls to help determine which version of your PPC landing pages perform best for your business. Before, you could track phone calls and you could also get PPC landing page data, but now with Universal Analytics you can do them at the same time. Regardless if you work for an agency or are a small business owner, this type of conversion data is priceless if you can save some of those precious advertising dollars.

Direct response

More and more direct response professionals are sending viewers of their television advertisements to a specialized URL in an effort to track online purchases back to the TV ad. However, they are losing attribution to the TV ad when that viewer picks up the phone and calls. Oftentimes the web gets the credit for that lead, because the user left the specified landing page and navigated to the main website. In this case, the ROI data for the TV ad becomes skewed. With call tracking phone numbers placed on the page of that specialized URL, and the help of Universal Analytics, you can tie that website to the calls made anywhere during the purchase process, closing the loop between that offline lead source, the online visit, and finally the call.

These are just three examples of the way Google Universal Analytics can be used to beef up your marketing data. Have more use cases? Leave them in the comments. Want to learn more? Watch this free webinar to see Universal Analytics in action.

The post 3 Ways You Can Use Google Universal Analytics to Pump Up Data appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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Shift follows acquisition of Canadian firm.

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Solution includes facial authentication.

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It makes sense, doesn’t it? As consumers we are no longer just interested in what we are buying, we’re also paying more attention to who we are buying it from – we seek out fair trade coffee and now, we want to know who is developing the medications we take. The pharma industry has always been one step removed from the customer due to strict marketing regulations, but now patients are showing more appetite to understand and interact with drug companies. 1 in 3 online consumers (36 percent) are interested in receiving customer service from the pharmaceutical industry. According to health economist and management consultant Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, customers want to learn about prescription drugs “right from the source.”

This presents a golden opportunity for pharma companies to cast off the shackles of a faceless corporation and develop relationships with the customers who use their products.  It’s a chance to dispel some of the myths and help customers.  Pharma companies are grabbing that chance by offering more channels to contact customers and promoting these channels proactively through their websites and social media.

But there are dangers here.  Pharma can only improve its relationship with patients if the interactions it offers are good experiences.  History is also in some ways a handicap – they have little to no experience in dealing with a high-volume of consumer interactions. As the amount of engaged patients increases, how can pharma companies provide an experience that actually improves their standing with consumers?

The Power of Interactive Voice Response

Intelligent voice solutions can facilitate a dynamic interaction with the caller, empowering customers to resolve inquiries quickly and easily. Cloud-based Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions can also be integrated via a secure web connection to any backend system (e.g. CRM, databases, web services) for real-time personalization of the caller experience and data capture of information such as patient history and preferences.

Patients are now seeking out convenient and quick information for new and existing drugs and prescriptions, and they are coming to the horse’s mouth for the answers.  It’s imperative to make sure they can get that information in a convenient, personalized way.

To find out more about how pharmaceutical companies can deliver an experience that works for the patient, read our pharmaceutical industry brief.

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This week I came across some promotional materials for a new automotive cockpit concept from Visteon that incorporates voice technologies, artificial intelligence, graphics, and animation to deliver an enhanced driving experience. Visteon’s Human Bayesian Intelligence Technology (HABIT) system employs machine learning algorithms that adjust to the driver and surrounding environment. To say that this stuff looks [...]

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Soliciting consumer feedback is a critical practice for any business or organization, regardless of the industry in which they operate. Key elements of branding include understanding how you are perceived by the people you are trying to reach, what parts of your strategy succeed, and which could use improvement.

Even the world’s airports are not exempt from this type of visitor input. The annual World Airport Awards survey travelers from 160 countries about their levels of passenger satisfaction as it relates to airports. There are 12 categories including the best domestic airport, the airport of the year and the top 100 airports, to name a few.

A word about the survey’s methodology. Per the World Airport Award’s website, the distinctions are based on “12.1 million survey questionnaires completed by 108 different nationalities of airline customers during the nine month survey period in 2012 and 2013, covering more than 395 airports worldwide. This established, industry survey is totally independent and evaluates traveler experiences across 39 different airport service and product key performance indicators – from check-in, arrivals, transfers, shopping, security and immigration through to departure at the gate.”

There are thirty-nine product and service-related criterion included in the survey. The data is physically collected from a variety of input sources, which include online and email passenger questionnaires, research groups, corporate travel questionnaires as well as interviews, telephone interviews and selective passenger interviews.

The results are telling, as not a single U.S. airport was ranked in the top 25 in the World’s Top 100 category. The top airports were geographically concentrated, according to Washington Post and included “lots of Northeast Asian airports, a few in Northern Europe, and transit hubs like Abu Dhabi, Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur.” The first American airport to appear is Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International, which ranks 30.

Other results? Singapore’s Changi Airport was voted the world’s best airport, Tokyo International Airport was named the world’s best domestic airport, Frankfurt Airport was selected as the world’s most improved, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport was awarded with the best airport in Europe title and Vancouver International received the honors for best airport in North America.

The results of this survey will be used in a numerous ways, from influencing funding to political pleas for infrastructure. The complete results can be found on the World Airport Awards website, which can be accessed here.

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This latest release includes an enhanced management console and time-saving personalization tools.

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Jumping into the Shark Tank: How VerbalizeIt Swam With the Sharks and Prepped Their App With Twilio

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We’re often asked by our clients if our Enterprise Highlighting service will slow down the loading time of their website. This is a question of great importance and we encourage more website owners to spend more time optimizing their website, thus giving their users a better experience when visiting the website. In this post, I’m going to explain why Enterprise Highlighting only has a minimal impact on the loading time.

What is website loading time?

First, we have to agree on what “loading time” means. The loading time can be described in two ways:

• The time it takes until everything on the webpage is loaded.
• The time it takes before a user can see and interact with the content of the webpage.

I believe the most important one is the time it takes before users can see and interact with the content of the website because this is the loading time that users experience even if everything is not loaded at that point. That’s also the loading time that we’ll be focusing on in this blog post.

There are several aspects that could affect the loading time on a website:

• The size of the files that are loaded (CSS files, JavaScripts, images, etc.) and the amount of HTML code.
• The code that has to be executed (only relevant for JavaScripts).
• If the file is loaded asynchronously or if the browser has to finish loading the file before continuing with the next item.
• Response time (how long it takes before a server responds on a request).
• Server bandwidth (with what speed a server can send a file to the user).
• User bandwidth (with what speed a user can receive files from the server).

I’m going to cover the first three aspects of loading time, but it’s important to take the other aspects into consideration as well.

How is loading time affected by adding ReadSpeaker Enterprise Highlighting?

Traditionally, many website owners look at the size of the files (CSS files, JavaScripts, images, etc.) to be loaded and the time it takes to load them. However, it’s very important to also consider that a browser has to stop and execute a JavaScript before it moves on to the next file.

When implementing Enterprise Highlighting, a JavaScript is added to the HTML code of the website. The script is called ReadSpeaker.js and it loads together with the rest of the page content. The size of this script is only 10 kB. We can compare that size to the logo of a website that is considered minimalistic and fast, namely google.com, where the size of the logo is around 19 kB (almost twice the size as our script).

Once the main JavaScript (ReadSpeaker.js) is loaded, the other necessary JavaScript components will be loaded at the same time as the rest of the page content. This method is called asynchronous loading and it’s the same method that newer implementations of Google Analytics use to speed up the time it takes before a user can see and interact with the page content. Find out more about the difference between asynchronous and synchronous loading in the section below.

Once all JavaScript components are loaded, the service is ready to be used. This can happen before the rest of the page has finished loading or after the rest of the page has finished loading since it’s not dependent on when other content on the page is loaded. If a click on the Listen button occurs before all components are ready, the service will hold the click until all components are ready and then start the player. The components are usually ready before the page content since it only takes a few seconds for them to load and execute.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous loading

Asynchronous loading is much faster than synchronous loading because browsers don’t have to stop and execute each individual JavaScript when loading the page content. When using asynchronous loading the browser will load and execute scripts in the background and continue loading the rest of the page content at the same time. Synchronous loading, on the other hand, means that JavaScripts load together with other content in a queue like fashion, thus adding to the loading time. The JavaScripts have to be executed along the way, which is why we don’t use synchronous loading for our JavaScript components.

Conclusion

Thanks to the method that we use for loading the script components (asynchronous loading), the loading time of a website is barely affected. The difference in loading time with our service on the page compared to not having our service on the page is minimal since the only script that really affects the loading time is the 10 kB main script. Yes, we still use bandwidth when loading our scripts and it could also affect the loading time of a page. However the effect of asynchronous loading would be so small that it’s hard to measure unless a user has a really low bandwidth.

The post Does adding ReadSpeaker slow down a website? appeared first on ReadSpeaker.

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Solutions include support for several platforms, including IOS and Android.

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Onco'Zine launches avoice-driven Audio Internet site.

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Product integrates voice with hands-free scanning.

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The story of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique, a restaurant located in Scottsdale, AZ, has taken the internet by storm and offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on behaviors that shouldn’t ever be a part of a company’s social media strategy. A short summary for anyone who hasn’t yet read about the incident:

The restaurant was recently featured on the season finale of Kitchen Nightmares, a show helmed by Gordon Ramsey. Controversy erupted after Ramsey declared the restaurant’s situation unfixable. According to the Daily Beast: “the couple was so difficult that even the typically hardened Ramsay decided he couldn’t help them and shut the show down before beginning the rehab phase.”

The collective internet responded in kind, bombarding the restaurant’s social media pages like Facebook and social commenting forums like Reddit with scathing comments about the establishment and its owners.

This is where the story devolves into every customer satisfaction pro’s nightmare. Instead of laying low and letting the excitement subside, the owners instead decided to take to their Facebook page and respond to the barrage of comments they were receiving, doing so in a less than polite way.

A quick excerpt (and yes they were writing exclusively in all caps): “TO REDDIT.  I FORBID YOU FROM SPREADING YOUR HATE ON THAT SITE.  THIS IS MY FACEBOOK, AND I AM NOT ALLOWING YOU TO USE MY COMPANY ON YOUR HATE FILLED PAGE.” This impassioned response only further fueled internet commenters’ fire, and the whole incident continued to devolve from there.

At the core of this story is a lesson on what not to do on social media as a company and a brand. Kelly Clay of Forbes writes an excellent piece summarizing the seven lessons you can take from this cringe-inducing story. Her seven tips? Per Clay, “don’t reply to everyone, don’t respond to trolls, don’t react right away, Reddit is not for the weak, don’t insult people, learn to walk away and don’t lie.”

Clay’s piece offers good lessons for even the most experienced marketers and highlights the importance of reading and responding to customer feedback in a levelheaded, calm and productive manner instead of following your social media whims wherever they happen to take you.

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Historically, partnering with a new vendor is a decision made after a significant amount of consideration due to the commitment required in becoming a partner. This commitment often means switching to an entirely different product line, retraining sales and technical resources to sell, support and develop on a new platform and can sometimes mean cutting a large check to the vendor as a partnering fee.

A business must be nimble enough that they can quickly shift directions to meet their customer’s changing needs. When these needs involve a solution the partner doesn’t already offer, an agile, flexible vendor is a key component to ensuring the partner can deliver exactly what the customer needs.

Voxeo knows that we are in the midst of a changing communications landscape and that there are fresh challenges facing businesses who want to add new and improved customer interaction channels. The days of IVR being used as a simple, “Press one, press two,” call routing system are on their way out the door as IVR can address a significant number of customer self-service needs with applications crossing over to new channels like mobile, Twitter and SMS.

A solutions provider may want to add these channels to their customer solution set, but under the old ways of partnering, would be looking at a long term, expensive commitment in working with a new vendor. Voxeo’s Referral Partner program has changed that aspect dramatically, offering a partner program without entry costs, lead minimums or sales quotas.

We know that your goal is the same as ours, which is to provide customers the best solutions to make their customers happy. When one of your customers or contacts needs a solution Voxeo can provide, you can refer them to Voxeo and determine the level of involvement you prefer to have with the opportunity. This level determines the commission percentage and allows you to refer the lead and walk away, or stay engaged and leverage our sales team’s expertise in selling multi-channel applications.

It’s a refreshing way to partner, available to you on demand and when it makes sense to bring in Voxeo’s best-in-class communication solutions.

Do you see the new partnership model as we do: Fluid and easily adaptable to individual business opportunities – or do you think there are improvements that could make this partnership model even more effective? I invite you to take a look at our Referral Partner page and leave a comment on this post with your thoughts on what the future of partnership looks like.

©2013 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Voxeo Named IBM Alliance Partner
2. MicroMessenger: The First Voxeo Connect Certified Partner Application
3. Voxeo Announces VoiceObjects On-Demand, Bringing Easy Voice/IM/SMS Creation to the Cloud

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When I start talking about interactive voice response (IVR), the reaction generally goes one of two ways: 1)”Yes! IVR is awesome and the possibilities are endless!” or 2) “I’m not a fan. It’s too complicated and cumbersome.” If the latter, I usually ask for the naysayer to expand on their dislike. And what do I hear? Some variation of the following three concerns…that really shouldn’t even be concerns.

It’s Too Difficult/Time-Consuming to Set Up

A bad experience with an IVR provider might put a bad taste in your mouth about the technology, but don’t let it. One bad Pad Thai doesn’t ruin all Thai food, does it? No! Setup for IVR can be instant, depending on your provider. With a web-based IVR designer, you can create a sophisticated IVR application in minutes. Not days. Not weeks. Minutes. So before you write off IVR for this particular concern, be sure to ask your provider if their technology has instant capabilities.

I Don’t Want to Pay Someone to Configure It, and I’m Not a Programmer

Who told you that you need to be (or pay) a programmer to have a sophisticated interactive voice response system? Shame on them! No wonder you don’t like IVR. It doesn’t have to be this way. With a hosted IVR provider, the IVR is configured from an easy-to-use website. You set up your system using your very own human voice, enabling your customers to be delivered to the person they are calling for—no getting lost in phone trees. No programming. No configuration costs. Just you, your home system, and your shiny new IVR.

I Don’t Want My Customers Talking to a Robot

This is the craziest concern of all. Your customers don’t have to talk to a robot, silly! That’s one of the best parts about IVR—you can record your menu in your own voice so that your customers never deal with anyone other than you. It’s easy to setup an IVR: you can use your own phone to record the prompts, and customize the listening options. Your IVR, your way.

I find that a lot of misconceptions about IVR are based on the old-school systems: robotic dinosaurs that didn’t offer a lot in terms of flexibility and reporting. But those were the old days! Now you can get instant, personalized interactive voice response, plus real-time analytics and voice-to-text transcription features. Businesses are using IVR to generate leads, upsell and cross-sell new products, provide phone surveys, and more. Don’t believe me? Check out this white paper on IVR and leave your concerns behind.

The post 3 Concerns About IVR That Shouldn’t Be Concerns appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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In honor of all the developers in town for Google I/O, we’re giving away tickets to a midnight showing of Star Trek: Into Darkness tonight (5/15) at The Metreon. So park your cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park (like Captain Kirk) and get ready for an awesome time.

There are two ways to win tickets:

• Find us at Google I/O and wear your Twilio shirt. Wear your Twilio redshirt for a hi-five and Vulcan salute.

• Text 415 “INFIX-YO” [415-463-4996] and answer a Star Trek trivia question to unlock the Eventbrite registration for the event.

We will be on scene in the lobby of The Metreon before showtimes to hand out tickets everyone registered on Eventbrite. Look for the Twilions in the red track jackets and stay tuned to our Twitter feed for updates.

Live long and prosper, fellow devs.

Beam Me Up Twilio: Win Tickets To Tonight’s Midnight Showing Of Star Trek: Into Darkness

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Biometric solution incorporates Intel technology.

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Unified dashboards and mobile additions deliver cross-channel analytics.

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New IVR development toolkit supports Windows 8 environments.

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New application uses speech and desktop analytics to improve contact center performance.

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App lets users capture, organize, and share notes and lists by speaking.

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Ameer is Solutions Architect at Twilio, specializing in building high volume, low latency solutions for customers. He has over 15 years of experience in building solutions. The following is syndicated content, originally published on Salesforce’s developer blog.

When it comes to case management, the shorter your response time is the happier your customers will be. I recently published an article on Salesforce’s development blog, showing you how to improve your case management response time using a Twilio SMS integration.

Situation Trigger SMS alerts to Case Team Members for High Priority Cases

One of your customers has called to report a critical issue. The call center agent
creates a “high” priority case and assigns a case team to work on the issue.

Creating the case fires a trigger that notifies the assigned team member(s) via SMS.  The entire team is simultaneously notified, enabling them to understand the issue and to start resolving it as quickly as possible.

Let’s dive into the code…

Prerequisites

1. To begin, you’ll need an account with Twilio and a Twilio phone number (requires login).
2. You’ll also need a Salesforce account where you can do the development.
3. Next, you’ll need to install the Twilio Helper Library for Salesforce into your Salesforce org.

Step 1:  Creating a trigger on Case Object

This trigger calls an Apex method, which has all the business logic to produce a list of case team members, and the message that needs to be communicated via SMS.

trigger trg_case_send_sms on Case (after insert, after update) {
//Call the Apex class to Send out SMS messages
TwilioSMSAsync.sendSMSCaseTeamList(Trigger.newMap.keySet());

Step 2: Creating the Apex method to send SMS message

The Apex method “TwilioSMSAsync.sendSMSCaseTeamList” has the business logic
to determine when to send the SMS message. In our use case, we want to send the
SMS when the Priority of the case is ‘High’ (seen annotation 1 in Figure 1) and to
the entire assigned case team (see annotation 2 in Figure 1). The text message
is completely configurable by the Force.com developer. In the example code, we
specify the Case Number, Case Contact Name, their Account Name and a URL for the
SFDC case record in the SMS message.

Note: The method sendSMSCaseTeamList is specified as @future(callout=true) since
it asynchronously makes external calls to Twilio REST APIs when the trigger fires.

The Apex method does three things in the following order:

a) Gets the case details for creating the SMS message body
b) Gets the list of case team members associated with the case
c) Using the Twilio SMS API, sends a SMS to each of the case team member in
real-time

public class TwilioSMSAsync {

@future (callout=true)
public static void sendSMSCaseTeamList(Set Ids) {

String caseNumber = '';
String caseContactName = '';
String caseContactAccountName = '';
String caseTeamMemberContactId = '';
String contactName = '';
String toNumber = '';
String messageBody = '';
String SFDC_hostnameUrl = URL.getSalesforceBaseUrl().toExternalForm();

// Get Case Info
for (Case c: [SELECT Id, CaseNumber, AccountId, ContactId, Priority FROM Case WHERE id
IN :Ids]) {

// Only send SMS to case team members if the Priority of the case is set to ‘High’
if (c.Priority == 'High') {
caseNumber = c.CaseNumber;
for (Contact cc: [SELECT Name FROM Contact WHERE id = :c.ContactId]) {
caseContactName = cc.Name;
}
for (Account cca: [SELECT Name FROM Account WHERE id = :c.AccountId]) {
caseContactAccountName = cca.Name;
}
// Create the SMS message body
messageBody = 'SFDC High Priority Case ' + caseNumber + ': ' + 'For ' +
caseContactName + '@' + caseContactAccountName + ' ' + SFDC_hostnameUrl + '/' + c.Id ;

// The TwilioAPI helper class looks up your Twilio AccountSid and AuthToken from your
current organization, in the TwilioConfig custom setting.
// You can configure TwilioConfig by going to Settings->Develop->Custom Settings-
>Twilio_Config, and your AccountSid and AuthToken
// can be found on the Twilio account dashboard
TwilioRestClient SMSclient = TwilioAPI.getDefaultClient();

// Iterate through all the Case Team Members and send them a SMS notification
for (CaseTeamMember ct : [SELECT MemberId FROM CaseTeamMember WHERE
ParentId = :c.Id]) {
caseTeamMemberContactId = ct.MemberId;
for (Contact cc: [SELECT name, MobilePhone FROM Contact WHERE id
= :caseTeamMemberContactId]) {
contactName = cc.name;
toNumber = cc.MobilePhone;
// Format (+) the toNumber
toNumber = '+' + toNumber.replaceAll('\\D', '');

// Setup the params for SMS message
Map<String,String> params = new Map<String,String> {
'To' => toNumber,
'From' => '<You_Twilio_Provisioned_PhoneNumber_Goes_Here>',
'Body' => messageBody
};
//Send SMS out via Twilio
TwilioSMS sms = SMSclient.getAccount().getSmsMessages().create(params);
}
}
}
}
}
}

Summary

Now, you have a working example of sending SMS in real-time to case team
members, enabling the service support team to respond to critical customer
issues effectively. Since the Twilio REST API helper library is written natively in
Force.com, it’s easy to integrate with other Salesforce Objects or Case Management
applications like ServiceMax.

In future posts, we’ll show you how to extend this further so your case team
members can respond to the SMS message, essentially, creating a bi-directional SMS
messaging system.

Twilio provides the tools to solve a wide range of communications needs. For
instance, with Twilio’s Force.com helper library, we can implement:

• Click to call: Easily integrate Click2Call within Site.com or any website
• Conferencing: Enable Conference calling within Salesforce
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System: Build context aware IVR systems based on Salesforce data.

Find out more about Twilio solutions here

Improving Your Case Management Response Time with Twilio SMS

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Another blog post of mine just went live on Safari Books Online. This one is on Using Database Migration.

I have one more blog post waiting to be published at Safari Books Online and there may be more coming. The next one will be a Tip and will build on the reset of the series showing you what that mysterious Configuration.cs that I briefly mention in this blog post is used for.

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Much of the discourse around the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on pharmaceutical companies has centered on the $80 billion agreed in rebates and to what degree the increased pool of patients will help offset this cost. From a customer service point of view, the industry has focused on how to service the new patients created by the bill, but the impact is much more far reaching if you zoom out and look at the macro picture.

Among the many impacts of the Affordable Care Act is the provision that penalizes hospitals for readmitting patients unnecessarily within 30 days of being discharged. Hospitals now face fines in the form of reduced Medicare reimbursements from the Government, and  over 2,000 hospitals were penalized in the first month of the program – some as much as $1 million.

A Plethora of Players and Channels

Hospitals are understandably seeking to reduce readmission rates through preventative care and robust guidance for patients to ensure that they stay on track with the doctor’s instructions, diet, exercise and medication instructions.  For this to be realistic, hospitals need to track and communicate closely with patients, and they need the help of multiple partners: primary care physicians, dieticians, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies. The dynamics have shifted towards collaborative care, where more parties are paying closer attention to a patient’s well-being.  For drug companies, that means more questions from more interested parties.

Many of these healthcare professionals are under pressure to ensure that patients are using their medication to get the best outcomes (and thus avoid being back in the hospital waiting room). In the background, meanwhile, new channels such as mobile, social and web self-service apps are increasingly being used by both healthcare professionals and consumers to gather information about their regimen and medication.

Answering consumers’ and healthcare professionals’ queries both efficiently and securely becomes a formidable challenge even for pharmaceutical companies with sophisticated contact center operations. The need for cost-effective and efficient service options across multiple channels becomes clear. Whether pharmaceutical companies are currently prepared to answer that challenge might be a little less certain.

Learn more about how our solutions can help pharmaceutical companies overcome the challenges and pressures of changing regulations.

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Most marketers today are familiar with marketing automation. So it may come as no surprise that a question I frequently get asked when I talk to marketing and demand gen professionals is “What’s the difference between marketing automation and voice-based marketing automation?”

It’s a good question. If you aren’t familiar with traditional marketing automation, it’s a very popular technology that marketers use to capture, score, nurture, and report on web leads. And while you can certainly import non-web leads (like those you bring back from a trade show) into a marketing automation tool to nurture them, the primary benefit of the technology is derived from online lead interactions with your web site and emails.

Marketing organizations today are gaining tremendous value from traditional marketing automation. When implemented and used correctly, these tools like Marketo, Eloqua, Silverpop, and HubSpot enable marketing teams to:

• Hand off more qualified leads to sales reps at a lower cost
• Better understand which campaigns are working, so you can optimize spending
• Get credit for the impact your campaigns have on pipeline and revenue

Voice-Based Marketing Automation Is Like Marketing Automation for the Phone

While traditional marketing automation tools work great with online interactions, they simply don’t work if a lead picks up the phone and calls you. That event is lost – you can’t track it back to the ad, keyword search, email, social media site, or marketing asset that drove it. So you can’t get credit for it, and you aren’t able to include it in your analysis of what marketing programs are working and what aren’t.

That’s where voice-based marketing automation comes in. Voice-based marketing automation is like marketing automation for the phone. Thousands of marketing teams today use it to generate, track, score, nurture, route, and report on phone leads.

To help illustrate the difference between the two, below is a table comparing some common functionalities and how each technology facilitates them.

Many businesses use voice-based marketing automation as a standalone tool without traditional marketing automation. But the two can also be used together to create closed-loop marketing where every lead is captured, responded to properly, scored, nurtured, and tracked through the sales process. You get a complete understanding of which campaigns are working and how they are impacting pipeline and revenue.

If you wish to learn more about voice-based marketing automation, check out our new eBook, “The Definitive Guide to Voice-Based Marketing Automation.”

The post What’s the Difference between Marketing Automation and Voice-Based Marketing Automation? appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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Join us Tuesday, May 21, 2013, from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, for Venture Lounge, a private networking event for high-tech entrepreneurs, developers, designers, social media professionals and investors here at the industrial-hip Town Square in Voxeo’s awesome downtown Orlando headquarters on the 10th floor of the Plaza.

Check out the agenda:

• 6:00 pm: Doors Open
• 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm: Networking
• 8:00 pm: Event Concludes

Did you notice that there are no boring presentations? Plus, this event is free of service-providers, job-seekers and other solicitors. Just grab a cold drink and enjoy some food, music and unlimited networking with Florida’s high-tech movers and shakers in a very cool atmosphere.

Are you ready to register for this FREE event? Official registration is on the Florida Technology Journal’s website, but you can RSVP on Facebook to see who else is attending and invite friends.

©2013 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Join us for Venture Lounge, Tuesday, February 21, 2012!
2. February 2013 Orlando Tech Meetup @ Voxeo
3. Join us for a free webinar today “Speech Solutions: Hosted Versus On-Premises” – 2pm US Eastern

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If I had to choose a single message that reverberated loud and clear at the Voice Biometrics Conference in San Francisco, it would be that financial institutions have derived significant and tangible benefits from the use of voice biometrics. This message was keenly delivered by Matt Smallman from Barclays Wealth. In his keynote presentation, Matt revealed that a voice biometrics solution sourced from Nuance enabled the British financial institution to significantly impact customer sat scores within...(read more)

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Like many of you, I was sad to hear on Friday that Google decided to shut down their service that let you search via SMS. Luckily, a basic version of the service is not difficult to create on your own using Twilio SMS and Google’s Custom Search API!

This is a very bare-bones implementation, but it should provide a decent framework for you to expand it with additional filters and more intelligent queries.

We are going to use Sinatra (my favorite lightweight Ruby web framework), the google-api-client gem, Heroku, and Twilio-Ruby to deploy a basic Google SMS app.

Setting up Custom Search

To begin, we need to go over to the Google API Console and create a new application. Once you have created the application, make sure to enable the Google Custom Search Service, then head to the API Access tab and get your API key. We do not need OAuth 2.0 for this project.

Next we need to create a new Custom Search Engine:

1. In the Sites to Search field feel free to enter any domain, we will delete it later
2. Head to the Setup tab under ‘Edit search engine’ – under the Sites to Search dropdown select “Search the entire web but emphasize included sites”
3. Select the domain name you entered on the list below and Delete it

Now you have a Custom Search Engine that searches the entire web.

Be sure to copy down the CX parameter from your URL – we will be using this later.

Coding the SMS

Now that our setup is complete, we can proceed to the code. For this project, we only have one route – /receivesms. Create a file named app.rb with the following contents:
Make sure you go back in and enter your Google API key on line 7 and your Custom Search Engine ID (CX) on line 15. You’ll also notice that we are only returning the top 3 results at this point, you can customize this number or add additional filters as per the API documentation for Custom Search. To finish up, we will need a Gemfile and a config.ru file (to deploy on Heroku)

Then you can deploy this to Heroku or your favorite hosting service, set up your Twilio number’s SMS URL to be http://yourapp.com/receivesms – and then you can get back to sending your search queries to Google via SMS!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail jonmarkgo@twilio.com or tweet @jonmarkgo!

Resurrecting Google SMS Search Using Twilio

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In the interest of providing you with the most comprehensive single source of information on the Voxeo product suite, we have taken the decision of consolidating our blog posts over at http://blogs.voxeo.com/ – and invite you to join the action there. We just added an article on the newly released Voxeo CXP 13, which introduces you [...]

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You may have seen the previews.

You may have heard it won prizes before it was even released.

You may have wondered what all the buzz was about.

Well, now you have a chance to experience it for yourself.

One area of focus in building CXP 13 has been the mobile web channel – but there are also many broad-ranging new functionalities in it that serve other channels just as well. In this post, I’ll only have space to sample some of them, but in the coming weeks we’ll follow up with articles on individual topics that go more in-depth.

If you have worked with previous versions of CXP (formerly VoiceObjects), one of the biggest structural changes you’ll notice is that the CXP Developer environment now supports channel-centric editing. Instead of dealing with all available object properties all the time, the IDE now adjusts to the context you’re working in: grammars and audios when working on IVR, images and widget when working on web, and so on. Some things, such as backend integration, are intentionally the same throughout.

The effect of channel-centric editing in CXP Developer is a better focus on the tasks and settings at hand, leading to greater developer efficiency in building and adjusting applications. CXP’s unique ability to serve multiple channels based on a single, integrated application definition is of course still fully available, and in fact stronger than ever – since you can now see very quickly what differs by channel, and what remains the same.

With the enhanced jQuery Mobile-based driver for the mobile web channel, you can easily build appealing, user-friendly applications that work on practically all current mobile devices. Sometimes, though, you may want to go beyond even what the plentiful standard configuration options offer – by providing customized HTML templates. The new Layout object makes this easier than it was before, with object type-specific entries as well as integrated XML highlighting, editing and validation. Furthermore, your custom definitions are now an integral part of the application as you move it from development to test to production – no need to maintain separate files that must be kept in synch.

Web applications use image resources in much the same way that IVR applications use audios – so it’s only fair that we’ve added an Image object to allow these to be referenced and managed in the same way.

User input in web applications is provided by means of various input elements such as text boxes, drop-downs, radio buttons, etc. – often referred to as widgets in Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). So this is also the name we have chosen for a new object type that allows you to configure this specific interaction. CXP 13 supports a total of 20 different widgets, ranging from a humble text box all the way to dynamically configured graphical lists.

The Kitchen Sink sample application that ships with CXP 13, and which we’ll take a closer look at in one of our next blog posts, provides usage examples for all of these widget types.

When building web applications you unfortunately always need to keep that tiny fraction of users in the back of your mind who will attempt to break or hack your app – for example by trying to inject markup code or SQL statements. CXP 13 provides you with multiple layers of OWASP-compliant protection here, from the scanning of parameter values to cleaning functions. CXP Developer comes with a tutorial application that explains the risks and how to address them, and we’ll also go into more detail in a future blog article.

CXP’s object-based approach has many advantages in terms of rapid development and easy re-use of components previously built. Especially when working with Expression objects, however, it could also be a pain in the neck since for nested “sub-functions” used as arguments you always needed to build additional objects and link them in. No more!

CXP 13 gives you the option of converting arguments into embedded functions (and vice versa). This makes it easy to encapsulate “inner” functions that are only needed in a single spot, while of course you can still re-use blocks that occur in several places.

It even automatically generates a brief description that summarizes what your expression does.

As the final topic in this overview, CXP 13 also supports Google Analytics for the web channel. Simply provide the web property ID, and data is automatically fed into Google Analytics – you can even add custom data if you want. Of course this is an additional option on top of Infostore, which also provides comprehensive data on user behavior and feeds CXP’s unique Hotspot Analytics that  alerts you to application problems and provides you with actionable insight right within the CXP Developer IDE.

If you want to give some or all of the above a try yourself,  you can download Voxeo CXP right now from http://developers.voiceobjects.com/downloads/deveditiondownload/

For a full list of our offerings, visit http://voxeo.com/products/

And as always, we’re interested in your comments – post here or reach me on Twitter Follow @voxeostefan

©2013 Voxeo Developers Corner. All Rights Reserved.

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I am really excited to start a new position today with WorkSpace Communications as a Senior Developer/Administrator. I am glad to be back doing what I love (and believe in) – extending Lync and Unified Communications to businesses regardless of their size.

I will provide more details and blog more about what WorkSpace Communications is doing n future blog posts.

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By now you’ve heard about Google’s newest and most exciting new tool, Universal Analytics. But you may not have heard about the amazing ways it’s being used by marketing and sales professionals in tandem with voice-based marketing automation. Marketers everywhere have realized the benefits of integrating call tracking with Google Universal Analytics and are already taking advantage of the exclusive integration with Ifbyphone–if you want to grow your business, view the source of inbound calls, see your customers’ web activity before and after calling you, and more, then you should too. To see the new integration in action, look no further. We have a webinar covering specific areas of interest right here.

The post Google Universal Analytics in Action appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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The Lassy Project Team

It takes a village to raise a child. But, what does it take to keep that child safe? John Guydon asked himself this question following 5th grader Jessica Ridgeway’s tragic kidnapping in his home state of Colorado back in October 2012.

John Guydon is a entrepreneur, not a cop, military veteran, or security specialist. When he set out to find a way to prevent child abduction and keep neighborhoods safe, he turned to what he knew — communication.

As CEO of SMS marketing platform, Duffled, John helps companies keep in touch with their customers via SMS. John created The Lassy Project, to empower parents with the communication tools they need to keep their kids safe.

The Lassy Project uses real-time messaging and GPS tracking to keep parents updated on their child’s whereabouts, and alerts them in real-time if anything goes wrong.

Here’s how it works. Parents set up their Lassy profile by entering in their phone number, zip code and their child’s mobile phone number, which will act as a GPS beacon. Then they map typical routes their kid takes from home to school, from their friends house back home etc. Lassy registers these routes in their mapping client. If your child is somewhere they shouldn’t be, Lassy recognizes that and you’re notified immediately via Twilio SMS.

Lassy relies on local networks of users they call villages, to help spread the word and help out when a child goes missing. Think of the village as an on demand search and rescue team comprised of Lassy users. Co-founder Temitope Sonuyi says, “The ability to press a button and all of the sudden have hundreds of people looking for your child and knowing where they’re at right now, on a map and being able to see it, is unprecedented.”

Parents and village members can see where their child, or a missing child, is on a map and real-time. They can then share alerts via SMS, and forward updates on social media channels. John Guydon says the goal is to get critical information distributed instantly to “turn hours into seconds.”

The Lassy Project is working on developing their network of users. As they say, “the bigger the village, the safer the kids.” They’ve recently received endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police in Colorado and are working with local businesses to establish and map “safe spots” where kids can go if they’re in trouble.

To learn more about the Lassy Project, visit their website here.

It Takes A Village – The Lassy Project Crowdsources Communication To Keep Kids Safe

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Potentially one of the most popular business mottos of all time, the idea that the ‘customer is always right’ was popularized by department store retailers like Harry Selfridge and Marshall Field around the turn of the 20^th century.  Since then, it has become a philosophy ingrained in our notion of customer service and satisfaction, but does this slogan hold true in any and all circumstances?

On his blog Value Creator Brian Vellmure considers this very question.  Often we categorize our interactions with clients as “customer relationships.”  Per Vellmure: “As in any relationship, sometimes there is a misalignment of expectations and a lack of compelling value proposition for both sides.”

Vellmure effectively points out that any relationship, even a business one, is not one-sided and it is very rare that any person or company is ALWAYS right. As with any relationship, customer interactions are give-and-take, and companies would do well to realize this.  For Vellmure, the old adage is inaccurate, and automatically adhering to it can have detrimental results.

Yes, a company’s first and foremost duty is to listen to and show empathy for their customer’s needs and requests, but this communication should be constructive and productive for both parties involved.

Vellmure puts this idea into context, stressing that companies have a goal to foster positive customer engagement and to emphasize “an endless and tireless pursuit to create value, to delight customers, and to create a community of engaged, happy and enthusiastic customers.”

The simple truth is that not every business will be a fit for every customer.  In Vellmure’s opinion, companies shouldn’t bend over backwards to please every customer 100% of the time, but rather cultivate mutually beneficial, profitable relationships that are a great fit for both client and service provider.

Ben Zifkin of Hubba stresses that employees understand their product and its potential in and out, in a different way than customers perceive it.  The end goal of any partnership is to effectively communicate the potential benefits partnership may offer in a way that customers understand, agree with and find appealing.

Zifkin offers a multi-level process for achieving this.  It starts with companies themselves drilling down to make sure they understand the fundamental problem at hand.  After they’ve accurately pinpointed the issue at the root of a customer’s complaint, they move on to identify and design a suitable solution that mitigates or fixes the problem.  Once both parties have agreed on the solution, execution commences.

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The annual State of Marketing Measurement Survey revealed some fascinating numbers about new tactics of marketing professionals and where the winds of change are steering them. We won’t give it all away here—you can download the full State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report for that—but here are five highlights that you should be aware of as you think about your marketing.

CEOs are ready to get their hands dirty

67% of survey respondents have a significantly or totally committed CEO who has influence in most marketing decisions. Not only that, those CEOs want regular reports on marketing ROI: 26% of marketing teams are reporting their marketing metrics to the CEO on a monthly basis. As the tools that enable marketing teams to measure success have become more and more sophisticated, business owners have begun to realize the importance of metrics, monitoring which activities succeed and which fail.

49% of marketing organizations are tracking new customers

Tracking new customer sources is the highest rated marketing metric utilized by marketing organizations. As businesses seek to cut out marketing initiatives that aren’t generating leads—and double-down on those that are—it becomes more important to be able to track the origin of new customers and be able to provide data to justify budget cuts and additional expenditures.

68% of marketing teams have a content developer

It’s not all data. Content marketing is one thing that most marketers agree is a must, and it turns out that 68% of respondents have added a content developer to their marketing teams, creating a consistent cadence of meaningful, appealing content to contribute to the organization’s marketing efforts. How important is content to your marketing team? Do you fall in that 68%?

25% of marketing teams have a growth hacker

Growth hackers are quickly becoming all the rage in marketing organizations, combining marketing knowledge with technology, code and data to grow their company’s business, focus on marketing measurements, and track analytics. With the budding emphasis on metrics, 25% of marketing teams have added a growth hacker to their ranks to manage this important aspect of their processes and contribute to growth.

Inbound phone calls were rated highest in their ability to effectively generate sales leads

When asked what marketing channels were most effective for generating sales leads, respondents rated inbound phone calls as having the greatest lead generation potential of all marketing activity. Many have long believed that phone leads are the missing piece to many marketing strategies, but with inbound calls rated so highly, we may be seeing a turn in the way marketing organizations perceive their most valuable leads (inbound phone leads are seven times more likely to convert.)

These are just a few of the exciting stats provided by The 2013 State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report, but if you want to learn more about what successful marketers are doing and how they’re doing it, the report is available to download free right here.

The post 5 Things You Should Know About the State of Marketing appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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Voice biometrics is truly coming of age, with 90 percent of consumers saying that they preferred the technology over other methods of authentication, according to a series of surveys from Nuance. The speech technology giant said that data from its findings showed that 85 percent of people are unhappy with current authentication methods. Mobile consumers [...]

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Myself and other developers have been giddy with glee at the recent release of Google Glass, one of the first largely available wearable computing platforms. After the Glass Foundry hackathons in January, I couldn’t wait to start building awesome applications such as GlassTweet with the Mirror API and helping others do the same.

Today, I’d like to debut the first tutorial on building Twilio applications for Google Glass, where you will learn how to receive SMS messages via a Twilio phone number on your Google glass and how to respond to them using the Glass voice commands.

Glass can send and receive SMS by default via the MyGlass Android app. However, I often use Twilio phone numbers for people I would not be comfortable giving my real phone number to. I wanted to be able to receive SMS just through my Glass device, not my phone, and only receive SMS from certain people.

If you’d like to see the end result, check out the video below before getting started:

Let’s Get Started

The first step is to follow the Mirror API quickstart guide – while this guide is for Python, the steps for creating a new Mirror Application in Google’s API console are the same as for Ruby. Once you have your Client ID and Secret, we can move on.

A few more basics before we get started: If you haven’t used Sinatra before, I recommend giving a quick look at their README. For those of you coming from a Python background, it is a similar framework to Flask. If you are new to Twilio, make sure you have signed up for an account and have upgraded it so that you can send outgoing SMS to unverified numbers. I would also recommend reading some of our Quickstart tutorials.

Now let’s dive into some code! First off, lets set up our Gemfile and config.ru:

Next we have to set up our data store. We will need to store OAuth credentials and the user’s Twilio phone number. For this, I decided to use the awesome data_mapper gem. Let’s create a new file and set up our database schema:

All we are doing here is forcing the application into SSL mode, defining our schema, requiring the necessary gems for our application, and telling DataMapper to run an automatic migration whenever we deploy our application. This is a great feature and makes it really easy to add new fields to our table in the future. Now that our data store is all set up, we can start writing our before block, which is evaluated before any route is processed.

Our before block thus far is doing some basic configuration of the different Google and Twilio API libraries. We put in our Client ID and Secret from Google’s API console, and we put in our Account Sid and Auth Token from our Twilio Dashboard. We also need to put in the base_url of our application. In my case, I pushed my app to Heroku but you can host it on any server that can run Ruby. I would recommend using a host that supports SSL.

Note that we are authorizing our application with the glass.timeline and userinfo.profile scopes – this gives us access to a user’s basic Google account data as well as their Glass device. We won’t need more than that for this application but if you wanted to expand it in the future you could certainly add more Google services here such as GMail or G+. We also initialize our @glass and @oauth2 objects based on the Google gem’s discovery documents.

Now that all of this basic setup is complete, we can finish up our before block by adding the following code:

Here we are dealing with three different incoming hits to our application. The first is /subcallback, which is the route that Google will send user-initiated responses to – in this case we look up the user’s auth token based on data passed along from the Mirror API callback. The next is if session[:token_id] – this situation occurs when a user is already logged in to our service, so we look at their session cookie. And the last is if we are receiving an SMS – in this case we get the user’s auth token by looking up their phone number from Twilio’s POST parameters. We end this block by refreshing the token if needed and redirecting the user to the Google OAuth login screen if they have not yet authorized their account. Now we can go ahead and create the routes for OAuth authentication.

Our first route, /oauth2authorize, redirects the user to Google for authorization. Our second route, /oauth2callback, is where the user is redirected to after completing the authorization flow. First we create a new TokenPair database entry for the user to store their OAuth credentials and we also store it in the session cookie for when they return to the website.

Next we make a request to the Twilio API to search for available US phone numbers. We then purchase the first available number and assign it to the user to be saved with their TokenPair.

And lastly, we make a request to the Mirror API to subscribe to timeline card INSERT notifications. We will get an INSERT notification when the user clicks on the Reply button on their Glass in order to reply to an SMS. Once all of this is completed, we redirect them to the root route.

Here we verify that they have authenticated their account by querying the Google Userinfo API to retrieve the user’s name and provide them with a simple greeting and we inform them of their new Twilio phone number that we purchased earlier. Now that all of our authentication code is written, we can write the routes that handle incoming and outgoing SMS messages. The first of these two routes is /receivesms – Twilio will make a request to this route every time it receives an incoming SMS message to your phone number.

When we receive the incoming SMS, we create a new timeline card on the user’s Glass. This card is given the REPLY menu action, which allows them to speak a reply to the message. We also give it a READ_ALOUD menu action to have the Glass read the SMS message aloud to the user.

We then set an HTML block to be displayed as well as the text we want spoken to the user. Most importantly, we set the sourceItemId to our SmsSid – this allows us to pass along Twilio’s SMS message identifier so that we know who to reply to later. We finish by returning a blank response to Twilio, though you could add your own SMS auto-reply here if needed.

When the user “Replies” to the message on their Glass, Google will make a request to /subcallback. The first thing we need to do is pull up the timeline item that was created for the user’s new Reply. This timeline item contains the transcribed speech-to-text from Glass. We then look up the timeline card that the user was replying to, which represents our incoming message that we created in the previous method (/receivesms). This card contains the SmsSid so that we can look up the message and find out who the sender was. We then make a request to Twilio to send an SMS from our user’s Twilio phone number to the sender of the original message, with the text that they spoke to Glass.

Now our application is completed. You should be able to run a bundle install and push this straight to Heroku or to the host of your choice, navigate to the base URL, and then start sending and receiving Twilio SMS messages on your Glass device. You can see the full application on Github here.

To get started on a more complex application, I recommend my scaffold project GlassRails, which is a very basic setup to get you going with OAuth and the Mirror API with Ruby on Rails.

If you have any questions, feedback, or conspiracy theories about Skynet please feel free to Tweet @jonmarkgo or e-mail me at jonmarkgo@twilio.com

Using Google Glass, Twilio, Ruby, and Sinatra to Send and Receive SMS Messages

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We recently posted a blog praising the grandfather of modern communication, Alexander Graham Bell, and his world-changing contribution of the telephone, which we notoriously regard as the single most powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. With that in mind, we got to thinking. What if Mr. Bell had invented the telephone even earlier? It certainly would have altered history, even in minor ways. Here are some ways the telephone—and voice-based marketing automation tools—could have changed four historical events.

Paul Revere–No Need for the Midnight Ride

With a cell phone, Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride would have been completely unnecessary. When the British Army began moving, Revere rode all through Charlestown warning the colonists of impending battle, but he could have just sent out a mass voice broadcast: “Hey guys, the British are up and moving. You should probably get ready.” Simple as that. No riding, no dodging warships, no running around in the dark. Everyone gets the message, everyone is ready.

Lewis and Clark–Lost No More

A phone would really have saved Lewis and Clark a lot of trouble (not to mention a GPS). But if nothing else, they could have called home and said, “Hi guys, we’re out of food. Can you send us some food?” That would have kept them from having to eat their horses, at the very least. Or they could have called a supply store (which, of course, would have had a store locator and routed the explorers’ call to the nearest bartering station).

Henry Morton Stanley–Save Yourself a Really Long, Painful Trip

Henry Morton Stanley is famous for his exploration of Central Africa as he searched for Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who had been out of contact for six years. Stanley tramped for months through tropical diseases and an unfamiliar climate. His favorite horse died from an insect bite. It was pretty rough. After months of wandering, he finally found Dr. Livingstone, who was hanging out in a village in Ujiji. If Stanley had just had a phone, the whole fiasco could have been avoided—and Livingstone probably wouldn’t have been lost to begin with. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” could have just been “Hey, David. It’s Henry. Where are you?” And what if Dr. Livingstone had a Find Me? Whether he was hanging out at home or on his cell wandering around the village doing some shopping, Stanley’s call would have rang all Dr. Livingstone’s phones until he answered. The wonders of technology.

Romeo and Juliet–Avoid Tragedy

Although these two characters are fictional, they have still inspired much literature since their star-crossed love story was put to the stage around 1594. It’s the timeless story of two teenagers in love whose parents just don’t understand. Unfortunately, their story ended in infamous tragedy. Think how it could have been different if they’d had cell phones! A quick text could have kept Romeo from upending that poison: “Hey Romeo, not dead. Play along. See u later. Love thee. .”   She could even have automated the message with an SMS notification so she didn’t forget, and Romeo could have confirmed easily. It would have been so simple—and a lot less sad.

Granted, most of history would have been different if the telephone was invented at the same time as the wheel. But “what if’s” are fun! How would your business be different if you could have a magical tool from the future? Tell us in the comments, or just read this ebook on the wonders of the telephone as the missing piece to your marketing.

The post 4 Ways the Telephone Could Have Changed History appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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In the midst of a noisy, chaotic home-remodeling, Ben Dyer was inspired to found a company. I use the term “inspired” loosely. Ben really needed to found Powered Now. Contractors working on Ben’s house gave him wildly different quotes and contracts. Some were printed spreadsheets, and some were chicken scratches on a spare piece of paper. Ben decided he needed to come up with a better way for both contractors and clients to manage contacts.

Ben’s solution, Powered Now, provides an end-to-end platform for contractors to easily generate and manage invoices, quotes and certificates while on site. Just two years into their journey as a company, the app won Best Mobile App At The Next Web Conference,  and are expanding rapidly.

“Our number one goal is to arm tradesmen and women with tools to do their paperwork more easily, more quickly and more professionally. Nobody goes into business to do admin,” says Ben. Their tablet based application allows tradesmen to easily log details of their project, contracts, record of payments, and customers’ information in one simple dashboard.

Powered Now uses Twilio SMS to keep customers in touch with contractors. When there’s a new quote or update on a job site, Powered Now sends the customer an SMS notification.

With the Best Mobile App Award in hand, they’re looking to keep improving their platform. “In the future, we’re looking to incorporate voice into the App, its one of the most highly requested features from our users,” says Ben.

To learn more about Powered Now, visit their website here.

Powered Now Simplifies Construction Contracts, Wins Big at The Next Web Conference

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John Amein, the Senior VP of Product Managment, Voxeo, is attending the 2013 Voice Biometrics Conference in San Francisco today and tomorrow.  The VBC SF theme: “Security in a Mobile, Multifactor World.”  

If you’re attending the 2013 Voice Biometrics Conference, please join Voxeo’s John Amein, TRUSTID, Inc’s Patrick Cox and Pindrop Security’s Vijay Balasubramaniyan, on Thursday, May 9th from 11:15 am – 12:00 pm, for the break-out session: “What You Can Learn From a Phone Call.”

In this session, you’ll learn that there’s more to fraud detection than voiceprints and hear what other factors can come into play to support strong authentication.

With increased usage of social, mobile, the cloud and big data, there is also increased opportunity to leverage the capabilities of smart devices for a strong authentication factor that does not disrupt a streamlined authentication process.

If you want to know more about existing solutions and upcoming technologies for voice biometrics to support strong authentication and fraud prevention, then you don’t want to miss this Voxeo-sponsored event!

©2013 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Want to learn about voice biometrics? Listen to this podcast…
2. Visit Voxeo at Voice Biometrics Conference
3. Save at Voice Biometrics Conference!

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Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Voxeo CXP 13, the first and only product on the market today that provides a single platform to build, deploy, analyze and manage customer self-service applications across multiple channels, including voice, text, mobile web and social media. Voxeo CXP 13 was recently selected by a panel of prestigious industry judges as the winner of “Best of Enterprise Connect,” which recognizes products that have made significant technological advancements within the enterprise communications industry.

CXP 13 gives businesses the tools they need to meet and exceed ever-increasing customer expectations, with a “design once, deploy anywhere” architecture that enables application lifecycle management across multiple inbound self-service and outbound communications channels. Mobility is a core capability of Voxeo CXP, as is the ability to integrate with APIs such as location-based services to offer a richer and more personalized customer experience.

Voxeo CXP 13 enhancements include:

• Dedicated channel views and channel-specific object browsing, enabling developers to focus on one communication channel at a time
• An integrated HTML5 code editor
• Embedded widget objects for building web forms
• An embedded device simulator that renders the HTML code to show the look and feel of applications
• Easy testing of mobile web apps via QR codes and flexible application preview in selected screen dimensions
• Integration with Google Analytics, including reports on device and browser types, as well as customer behaviors and demographics

Voxeo CXP also offers:

• Hotspot Analytics right inside the integrated development environment, making it easier than ever for developers to make application changes based on production data that was previously only available deep inside business user and administrator reports. By uniquely highlighting data and Key Performance Indicators within the application dialog flow, developers can quickly spot potential areas for improvement and take immediate action to optimize self-service.
• An enhanced Business User Interface that provides non-technical business the ability to change and update components of live applications instantly, without involving an application developer or system administrator. Configurable parameters are determined by the developer and controlled by business rules. Common examples include managing hours of operation and call routes related to call transfers from your IVR, customizing messages, adding special announcements or marketing campaigns to your web apps, deactivating menu items in your IVR, two-way SMS, or web app, etc.

Voxeo CXP can be deployed on premise or in Voxeo’s global cloud. Anyone can try Voxeo CXP for free at www.voxeo.com/free with full access to Voxeo’s 24/7/365 technical support.

©2013 Voxeo Talks. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. The “State of Voxeo” news release – announcing record growth and global expansion

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Few companies could survive without the phone. They generate leads and close business over the phone. They grow accounts and support customers over the phone. It’s the backbone of their entire organization.

Take a second to think about how your own company uses the phone today. How much new and repeat business could your sales team close without phone conversations? How many customers would you lose without phone support? Would you even be able to stay in business without the phone?

Now think about it the other way: How much would your business grow if you had technology to manage, automate, and scale your phone conversations to capture and engage more leads, generate more revenue, and better support more customers?

That’s the power of voice-based marketing automation. Voice-based marketing automation is the technology that enables businesses to manage, measure, and automate sales and support calls. Marketers, salespeople, and support professionals use it to generate and track phone leads, close business faster, and provide better customer service.

What Does Voice-Based Marketing Automation Do?

Thousands of businesses today use voice-based marketing automation to facilitate and automate activities such as:

• Phone lead generation
• Call tracking and reporting
• Call scoring and filtering
• Lead nurturing
• Call routing and recording
• Over-the-phone payment processing
• Answering routine customer inquiries
• Building inbound and outbound phone surveys
• Sending interactive voice broadcasts

Without voice-based marketing automation, these activities are either impossible to do manually or require a significant investment in time and employee resources.

Download the New eBook on Voice-Based Marketing Automation

If you are interested in learn more about voice-based marketing automation, download our new eBook, “The Definitive Guide to Voice-Based Marketing Automation.”

This guide explains what voice-based marketing automation is and how businesses are using it to generate revenue, improve efficiency, and cut costs. It provides tips for selecting the right system and answers questions such as:

• Why is voice-based marketing automation becoming so popular?
• How is it different from traditional marketing automation?
• What features make up a voice-based marketing automation system?
• What value do businesses get from using voice-based marketing automation?

If you rely on the phone to grow your business, voice-based marketing automation lets you maximize that growth by managing, automating, and scaling phone conversations. Check out “The Definitive Guide to Voice-Based Marketing Automation” to learn more.

The post Grow Your Business by Maximizing Your Phone’s Value with Voice-Based Marketing Automation appeared first on Ifbyphone.

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Renee Citlau has taught high school for the Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD) for sixteen years.  While participating in Pepperdine’s online master’s degree program, Renee became inspired by the potential of online education to improve student engagement, increase equity in course offerings, and develop the 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication that students need in order to compete in a global economy. With this in mind, Renee developed the district’s first online course six years ago.  Since then, the online program has grown to include twelve online teachers in a variety of content areas.  She provides ongoing support and training to online teachers in curriculum development, online technology, and online instructional strategies. Renee was named the 2013 National Online Teacher of the Year, an honor presented annually by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL). Renee has kindly accepted to give us her feedback on text to speech as a resource to help students.

ReadSpeaker (RS): How long have you been aware of text to speech technology?
Renee Citlau: I became aware of ReadSpeaker last year at a workshop that I attended.

RS. What where the reasons that convinced you that this technology could help you better teach your online business courses?
Renee Citlau: We always look for ways to make our curriculum accessible for all students including English learners, long-term English learners, and students with disabilities.  We know that many students struggle with reading and we want to provide support for struggling readers.

RS: Which groups of students in your online classes benefit the most from text to speech?
Renee Citlau: Any student that is a struggling reader will benefit from text to speech.  English learner and long-term English learners are particularly helped by text to speech.  Many of these students have oral proficiency in English, but they are lacking reading and writing skills.  Text to speech helps to provide the scaffolding these students need in order to access the curriculum.  In addition, English learners hear the correct pronunciation of the words which helps them in their language acquisition.  It takes 5 to 7 years for students to develop academic English.  Text to speech is one of the tools we can use so that our English learners can participate in rigorous classes while, at the same time, develop their literacy skills.

RS: What benefits do you see in having content being presented in visual and audio formats at the same time?
Renee Citlau: Students have a choice in reading without the audio or listening to the audio while each word is highlighted.

RS: How does the highlighting of the text as it is being read benefit your students?
Renee Citlau: Students hear and read along with each word which helps to reinforce language acquisition and their learning.

RS: Do you see ReadSpeaker as a tool that benefits students with reading disabilities?
Renee Citlau: ReadSpeaker  is a tool that helps students with reading disabilities become better readers and the ability to access knowledge and gain skills that were previously closed because of their reading disability.

The post Text to speech for education: Q&A with Renee Citlau (Anaheim Union High School District) appeared first on ReadSpeaker.

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